A conversation about hip-hop‘s GOATs has to include Salt-N-Pepa, the groundbreaking all-girl group that topped the charts with hits like “Push It” and “Let’s Talk About Sex. Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton started as college friends and quickly launched a music career that made the guys who were dominating the hip-hop game at the time stand up and take notice.
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When they added their DJ Deidra “Spinderella” Roper, the trio was unstoppable. However, the first female rappers to go certified platinum dealt with struggles that included an internal fight for royalties and a lawsuit against their record label.
Four decades after hitting the scene, the ladies of Salt-N-Pepa are stronger than ever, celebrating their Nov. 8 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. This is the story of Salt-N-Pepa.
Opposites Attract
Cheryl “Salt” James and Sandra “Pepa” Denton met in their first year as students at Queensborough Community College in New York City. The ladies, who describe themselves as “polar opposites,” say their bond was immediate.
“We were big time screw-ups. We never went to class. We’d just hang around in the lunch room playing cards, and we formed this amazing friendship,” James told The Guardian. “Because we were polar opposites, we fascinated each other.”
Making the Band
When they weren’t in school, James and Denton worked part-time as operators at Sears Department Store. During one of their shifts, James’ then-boyfriend, music student Hurby “Luv Bug” Azor, had an idea to make a record. Although the ladies had never rapped in public before, they were down to give it a try.
“I remember him asking me, ‘Can you rhyme?’” Denton told Rolling Stone. “I just had my little raps that I used to write, but I was nervous, I was scared. I always wanted to, but I never did.”
The Show Stoppa
Denton and James released their first track, “The Show Stoppa (Is Stupid Fresh),” in 1986, under the name Super Nature. The ladies didn’t hold back on this diss track, taking aim at Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh and their hit song, “The Show.”
“It was very ballsy for two women that nobody knew to do something like that!” James told Vibe in an interview.
The ladies were ready to launch their musical careers, but first, they thought they could use a name change. The name that stuck, Salt-N-Pepa came straight from their lyrics.
“When we sang, ‘We go together like salt and pepper,’ the name felt perfect for us,” James told The Guardian.
A Tale of Two Spinderellas
If you look at the album cover for Salt ‘N Pepa’s first studio release, “Hot, Cool & Vicious,” you’ll notice that there is another woman pictured next to James and Denton – Latoya Hanson, who is credited as the first Spinderella.
By the time the ladies were ready to go out on their first major tour, they were looking for someone to replace Hanson, who they say missed several rehearsals and appearances. A then-16-year-old Deidra Roper auditioned for the role and the rest is history.
“Push It”
You may be surprised to know that one of Salt-N-Pepa’s biggest hits was originally an afterthought. “Push It” was recorded as a B-side to “Tramp,” a track on their “Hot, Cool & Vicious” album.
Although the ladies maintain that the song is about dancing and not about having sex, they say many of their fans aren’t convinced. In an interview with The Guardian, Denton recalled the song making them a target of police when they performed it live.
“At one show they tried to censor us and the police were called to stand at the side of the stage, waiting for us to say something inappropriate. When we were singing Push It, they thought we were singing: ‘P***y real good.’ I ended up hollering at this policeman, ‘It’s Push It! It’s about pushing it on the dance floor!’” she said.
The song has even been known to get some sea creatures in the mood.
“An aquarium once told us that when they played ‘Push It,’ the sharks started mating,” James added.
The Ladies Didn’t Always Like “Push It”
These days, “Push It” is the song most Salt-N-Pepa fans want to hear the ladies perform. But if you ask Denton and James, they’ll tell you that their biggest hit wasn’t their favorite at first. The ladies, who wanted to be known and respected as serious rappers weren’t trying to be associated with a pop song.
“We recorded it in the bathroom of this guy named Fresh Gordon’s home,” James said in an interview. “We didn’t like the song. Hurby was saying ‘This is what we’re gonna do,’ and we were like, ‘We don’t get it.’”
Bringing Fashion and Femininity to Hip-Hop
Besides making incredible music, Salt-N-Pepa were fashion trailblazers. Their fans were obsessed with their colorful leather jackets, bamboo earrings and ripped denim. But you may be surprised to know that their signature asymmetrical haircut started by accident.
“My sister was trying to get her beautician’s license and I was her guinea pig. She permed my hair and didn’t wash out one of the sides properly, so the whole right side of my hair was eaten out,” Denton told The Guardian. “I was crying, and we had shows to do, but Cheryl said, ‘OK, let’s just shave it all, put some lines in it but leave the other side long.’ It looked great, so Salt did her hair the same.”
Work-Life Balance
The ladies of Salt-N-Pepa were determined to make a name for themselves on their own merits and made a point to put their personal stamp on every aspect of their career.
“I edited videos. It was every aspect of everything that you saw, we were a part of,” James told Tamron Hall in an interview.
But the job wasn’t easy, as the ladies balanced stardom with motherhood.
“It was a challenge,” James added. “We had bassinets in the back of the tour bus a lot, bringing nannies on the road, bringing curriculum on the road, and missing them because sometimes you can’t take them with you.”
“Let’s Talk About Sex”
Another of Salt-N-Pepa’s biggest hits, “Let’s Talk About Sex,” was also one of their most controversial. Released in 1990, the song rose all the way to number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Their initial intent was to get people to have honest conversations around sexuality, including safe sex, especially at the height of the AIDS epidemic. But not everyone was on board.
“I remember a parent saying he used to be a fan until his daughter started listening to this song, and I’m like, ‘Wow, people really don’t listen to lyrics, do they?’ Because if you listen to the lyrics, we’re not talking about being promiscuous, we’re just talking like, why can’t we just talk about sex? All the good things and the bad things, the things that need to be discussed,” James said in an interview.
Internal Beef
In 2019, the group went through some internal challenges as Deidra “Spinderella” Roper filed suit against her bandmates, claiming she didn’t receive her share of royalties for a 1999 “Best of” album and a VH1 special about their origin story.
Their Lifetime Biopic
Roper also expressed her disappointment with being left out of the development of a Lifetime biopic about the group on social media in 2021.
“Too often, Black women who have made meaningful contributions in their industry are left out of historical narratives. Back when Salt n’ Pepa was building our legacy, which is rooted in empowering women, I could not have dreamed that this same group would one day disempower me,” she wrote on X in 2021.
“It Wasn’t Enough For Me”
Roper wasn’t the only one who wasn’t happy with the Salt-N-Pepa biopic. In an interview with Vinyl Esquire, the original Spinderella, Latoya Hanson, says the film was “trash” and left out a a lot of important details of Salt-N-Pepa’s origin story. She also said it didn’t do enough to acknowledge what she contributed to the group.
“It wasn’t enough for me,” she said. “To me, the things that were most important, they left it out…It looked like something quickly thrown together.”
Fighting for Their (Music) Rights
In May 2025, the ladies of Salt-N-Pepa filed a lawsuit against Universal Music Group for the rights to some of their biggest hits. The group alleges that UMG is refusing to grant the group the termination rights of the their original contract which would allow them to regain control of their work from the label after a 35- year period.
They also say the company has made some of their biggest hits unavailable to stream on platforms like Apple Music and Spotify.
“The record companies have been getting away with this for a lot of years, and it’s time for us to fight for rights,” James said in an interview with GMA. “We’ve done all the things legally to get our copyrights back, but they’re just refusing.”
But UMG is trying to have the suit dismissed, claiming Denton and James’s termination rights are null and void because they did not sign their contract.
“We didn’t have that leverage. We didn’t have that knowledge. We didn’t have that control in the 80s,” Denton told GMA. “Just being women in this industry, it’s a constant fight – a fight to be heard, a fight to be respected.”
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
On November 8, 2025, Salt-N-Pepa were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. The ladies made history as the first hip-hop act to receive the Musical Influence Award. In an interview with GMA, Sandra Denton told Robin Roberts that the honor means everything to the group because it’s about their musical legacy –something her rhyming partner Cheryl James agrees with wholeheartedly.
“These accolades are just solidifying that we did the darn thing,” James said.
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